


An Ongoing Count of Enchanted Objects

by Seventeen_Juice_Boxes



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Alice ends up happy, Angst with a Happy Ending, BTW Quentin and Alice were once in love so if ur not into that angle don't read this, But specifically Penny40, Canon Compliant until the last second, Everybody Lives, Everybody gets to live, Except my writing is better, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gratuitous Musical References, Happy Ending, If You Care About That Sort of Thing, It's touch and go for a bit here, Just this once Rose, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, No Smut, Not Canon Compliant, Penny is actually soft, Post-Episode: s04e13 No Better To Be Safe Than Sorry, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Quentin chooses happiness, Rapidly Switching POV, Rated mature for language and mental health stuff and death haha, Read my other fics if you want that, Seriously so Soft, The description makes this sound funny but i promise this is the furthest thing from comedy, This isn't saucy, Yes i've seen s5, everyone is soft, fuck the writers, he gets better tho, it doesn't exist in this fic, no i don't want to talk abt it, soft, this is soft i swear, this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22993363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seventeen_Juice_Boxes/pseuds/Seventeen_Juice_Boxes
Summary: "Abandoned by life, by everything he knew, by the objects that had once held beauty and power and significance, now nothing but broken ceramic, melting leather, scrambled eggs, scalding metal, burning paper, and inedible fruit, by any faith he once held in the magic of these things, he had nothing left to give. He looked at Penny, and he couldn't move, couldn't argue, couldn't see. All he could do was open his mouth, smile faintly, and ask, just above a whisper, "Please?"All Penny could do was look back at him, sigh, and snap his fingers, and then he was alone. Suddenly he was back, looking far more tired than when he left. He laughed and smiled, the warmest look Quentin had ever seen on the man's face. He said, 'You're a fool Coldwater. And a persuasive one at that." Then another snap, a flash of bright light, and he was gone, and Quentin was sitting on a stump, and the fire was burning hot."OrQuentin shows up late to his own funeral, and Eliot gets to be brave.
Relationships: Past Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn - Relationship, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 10
Kudos: 158





	An Ongoing Count of Enchanted Objects

**Author's Note:**

> I had to rewatch the finale to write this (I cried). Appreciate my sacrifice. (Also yes, I stole the title from The Great Gatsby. If F. Scott Fitzgerald wants to sue me I invite him to try).

Alice Quinn both loved and hated Quentin Coldwater. She saw in him everything he didn't see in himself, every shining, beautiful, thing, and every raging, angry, violent, stupid thing. That put him there. It was for this reason that she could not put him to words. "I don't know what to say," she tried, almost to herself. What words could you put to attempts to find one another? They didn't work, she knew that. But she knew that she loved him, such strong emotions that they were patently ineffable. She thought of herself, and of the mug she grasped and tossed it into the fires. Quentin spoke, once or twice, of the mugs need to be repaired. She wondered if he felt that for her. Little Alice Quinn, dead brother, too smart for her own good, and so, so full of rage, and all he could feel was that overwhelming desire to mend, that call to be fixed.

"I mean, what words are ever going to-" She tried, but Kady stopped her.

"They won't." And it really was that simple, at the end of it all. She watched Kady's hands swirl, the start of a song, and it was so very absurd, and yet so stupidly Quentin, so perfectly them, so devastatingly sad. She started to sing, because what else was she going to do, if not let the words or the fire lift her away.

He almost wanted to beg Penny to take him back. To tell him that he didn't need to see this. He couldn't do this, he couldn't watch his friends, the people he loved, the people he wanted so desperately to love and cherish forever, mourn him. But it felt almost a disservice. He had done this to them, it was only right that he watch the fallout, It was, even if Penny didn't see it that way, his penance. They only kind he could get, aching for more. Aching to push a thousand boulders up a thousand hills if it meant stopping them from ending up here. If Alice saw herself in the mended mug, then so did Quentin. One could not mend themselves, but still, his own soul begged for it. He tried in Fillory, in Julia, in magic, in Alice, in Eliot, in Teddy, in Poppy, to soothe that screaming feeling beneath his skin. That lingering itch beneath his fingers to fix, to heal, to mend, to make whole again. But he could never do it. For himself, for Alice, for anyone. A mending too fine, too major and yet too small for his discipline. And so as the mug that once seemed to show the specifics of his power, give him an identity, a promise to help, heated and cracked, he, for perhaps the first time, did not feel the ache to put it right again.

His ongoing count of enchanted objects reduced from 6 to 5.

Kady Orloff-Diaz and Quentin Coldwater were not close. In all honesty, much of what she knew about Quentin came from Julia, in that time that there were still "best bitches." She didn't dislike him, and he didn't dislike her, but as she sat by the fire, listening to the harmony of Alice and Julia's voice, from the simple spell she had cast, to unite them in their grief, she felt very close to everything in the universe, while simultaneously very alone. She felt like she had never understood Quentin more, and at the same time like she didn't know him from Adam. She felt the cold spine of his favorite book in his hand, and tossed it, almost careless, into the fire, as she started to sing, her eyes watering in a strange, senseless notion.

It should have made him mad. He should be boiling with fury, red and angry, as his one comfort was eaten up by the flame. But he wasn't. It felt so right, even as he watched from the wrong side of the fire, and he felt that Kady knew that. Because the real Fillory was so much more and yet so much less than the book. Fillory was where he spent 50 years falling in love with his best friend. Fillory was where he ruined all magic. Fillory was where he took a moment at the Rainbow Bridge to let them all feel human, in the last moment he'd know true peace, in this timeline anyway. Fillory was where he could escape the bullshit on Earth. The book was just that, a book. It was the book that saved him, the book that carried him through the worst bits of left, the book he clung tightly too in the hospital at 15. But it was also a book written by pedophile rapist Christopher Plover. A book full of lies and exaggerations. A book that simultaneous built Quentin's personality, and ruined the very magic contained within its own pages until it was just ink on pages. It was perfectly fitting that it die with Quentin.

His ongoing count of enchanted objects reduced from 5 to 4.

William "Penny" Adiyodi was fairly certain that he never got along with Quentin Coldwater in any single timeline. But as he leaned toward the fire, egg, which a stupid face on it, in hand, he could find no room in his heart for reproach. Not to say that the night of egg-rehab was some sort of grandiose moment where the two realized they were incredibly close. But it was common ground. A simple, stupid night, laying with eggs in their respective ears because of Quentin's fling's weird obsession with dragons. It was so stupidly, classically them. He realized as he dropped the egg gently into the fire that he felt a great, terrible sadness. A sadness he would never allow himself to feel again, but just for a moment, he could miss Quentin. And when he stood back up, it was gone, and he was that same, stone-faced Penny that tumbled into this timeline what felt like a lifetime ago, as he began to sing, the water never reaching his lower lid.

If the whole thing weren't so pathetically sad and terrible, he would have burst out laughing at the sight of Penny throwing the stupid egg into the fire. Despite a strange sense of loyalty to the original Penny, strange only in that Penny never seemed to like him and Penny40 was still standing right beside him, Somehow, though, it was the least funny thing Quentin had ever seen. He'd almost forgotten about that night. It was a moment of pure, unbridled stupidity, shared with someone who maybe didn't hate him as much as previously thought. But he would never have that conversation with Penny. He would never able to reconcile the fact that they missed each other, in different worlds, and the egg was just that. A stupid egg, a symbol of a time that came and went, an opportunity that knocked and then turned when no one answered the door. He smiled at Penny, who seemed endlessly amused, but it didn't reach his eyes.

His ongoing count of enchanted objects reduced from 4 to 3.

Margo Hansen loved Quentin Coldwater. Maybe she could never say that to him, maybe could she could never say it to Eliot, maybe she could never say it herself, maybe she could never speak again. Likely not, but even as she listened to Eliot sing, preparing her own voice, she felt as if, for a moment, she might never. She helped Eliot along, even as he put most of his weight on the cane. On the other arm hung Quentin's crown. She was suddenly, painfully reminded of that afternoon at the Rainbow Bridge. She wondered how things had ever felt so simple and happy then, it felt now like a child's dream, crowing her friends, and herself, Kings and Queens, in the fantasy world of her childhood. Now, her best friend was dead, her other best friend, her soulmate, ruined, hanging off her arm, gaping wound in his strong stomach. She sang softly as she chucked the crown into the fire. It was almost stupid, the crown, symbolic and never worn. She's shocked she even remembered where the damn thing was. Her fellow king was dead, and with it, Margo cursed, silently, internally, Quentin Coldwater and his stupid books and childlike enthusiasm.

He could have screamed when he watched Margo and Eliot hobbled from inside. His mouth opened, a punched-out sound, an aborted attempt at a scream that no one but Penny40 would have heard anyways. He was suddenly, so painfully reminded of exactly how far away from this scene he was. The crown seemed so stupid, as it tumbles into the fire. He was, in theory anyway, although he had likely been impeached, or whatever the Fillorian version of it was anyways, long ago, but it's not like it made much of a difference anyway. A king of Fillory, crowned by Margo Hanson in a moment of her rare affections for him, and he had maybe worn it for an extended period of time three times. It was his grandest, wildest fantasy as a child, to be here, and he spent as much of his time away from his duties as possibilities. He wondered absently if his constituents would mourn him, if they even knew he was still alive. The crown, once a fantastical symbol of his wildest dreams, was now just a metal toy, a pathetic image of the terrible reality of being a king of Fillory.

His ongoing count of enchanted objects reduced from 3 to 2. 

Henry Fogg had cared for Quentin Coldwater in 40 different timelines. He has watched him die 39 times, and he was again, at Quentin's 40th funeral. But it was so different, so painful. Because the one they got it right. The Beast was dead, and Quentin was alive, and everything was everything, was supposed to work out. But Quentin Coldwater was a volunteer tomato in the case of the Beast as much as he was in the case of his own death. He was selfless and stupid to a fault, and he had proved it now a 40th time. In a way, he could only blame himself. He had sent Quentin Coldwater this letter 40 times, floating him towards Eliot Waugh on the Brakebills sign. As he tossed it into the fire, he could feel nothing but resentful for both the paper itself, luring Quentin towards his death 40 times, and his hands that had sent it, knowing full well they would always end up here. As he watched the flames curl around the edges, signing, almost unaware of how new, how raw this familiar scene was for the crowd around him, he hoped that, just once, the paper could stay in the fire this time.

Brakebills was such a distant, innocent memory in his mind that had it not been for the very presence of the Dean, he would have considered it a fantasy. At times, it still was, as he roamed the countryside with the Monster when he was no longer Brain, he thought of himself, tucked away in the study nook in the physical cottage, as Eliot and Margo teased and flirted from the outside, trying to tempt him to a mysterious blue-green cocktail. It was a pleasant memory. HE realized, with almost pathetic desperation, that he would not be at his own funeral right now had he never been given that letter. But with that, there so much good that would have happened without it, that he could not bring himself to regret it. Nevertheless, Brakebills was such a minor part of who we was now, the whole being dead thing aside, that the letter seemed to him, such an insignificant piece of paper. Maybe once a piece of paper that pulled him into a wonderful world of fantasy, now something that had changed him forever, the magic school it brought him to so ridiculously small, respectfully. "Wow." He said, 10 million emotions and yet nothing at all in one word.

"Appreciate the level of sincere grief, dude," Penny told him, and how could he not, when it was thick, almost viscous, in the air, seeping through the cracks of the two worlds. "I seem to remember when I kicked it...you laughing" And it wasn't funny, nothing about this was funny, but he laughed anyway because Penny was trying.

"I'm really sorry about that," he managed, and he was sorry about so much more, too, but they were joking, this was fun, he could be happy if he tried hard enough.

"It's okay," Penny assured him, and it was so, so not okay, but it had to be. "I'm not you," he laughed, and Quentin wished, for a fleeting, selfish moment, that he was.

"I think you know your answer now," he said, more serious, more somber, and he was wrong."The story for them, it's just starting. But it won't be the same story, because of you. You didn't just save their lives, you changed their lives as much as they changed yours," he was sincere, he believed it, but Quentin couldn't. This was his story too, and he looked around a little desperate. He wasn't ready, he couldn't just let them go like this. "You didn't wanna leave all that, did you?" He sounded like a therapist, and Quentin hated him for it, hated him for not understanding.

His ongoing count of enchanted objects reduced from 2 to 1.

Eliot Waugh found a soulmate in Quentin Coldwater. He had woken up in probably the worst pain he'd ever felt. Which was really saying something, considering the last few years. He felt like, well, like he had taken a large ax to the side. It was night, or at least someone had dimmed the windows to make it dark. Somewhere, though, he knew it was night. He didn't know how, but he could feel it in the air that it was late. As he came back to himself, he could see a fire raging outside. He shifted, making an attempt, a failed one, to sit up. Suddenly, Margo was at his side. Everything was alright, for a beautiful 10 seconds. And then he ventured, his voice faint, foreign to himself, "Where is everyone?" 

Margo sighed, reveling for a moment in how perfectly alive he was. "They-They're outside, El."

He smiled, innocent. Moments from tragedy. " Can you get Quentin for me? I need to tell him something, as soon as possible." Margo leveled a look at him, and Eliot knew that Quentin was dead. She didn't say anything, and he didn't either. He couldn't. All he could manage was a soft "oh."

She tried to smile, and nothing had ever reached her eyes less. "They're having a-" she couldn't say funeral. She couldn't. It was too, too something, too final. "a vigil. outside." Almost on cue, Eliot could hear the soft singing from outside, and then he was on his feet, on the cane, and Margo was leading him out, as he walked, he grabbed the peach from the bowl on the counter, and Margo, his perfect, understanding Bambi, said nothing, and brought him out as he sang.

Later, as he settled onto the bench, watching the others throw their hearts into the fire, he brought the peach to his lips, a goodbye he didn't get the chance to say, and threw it into the fire. The worst mistake of his life, unresolved, burning to a crisp around the picture of Quentin Coldwater reflected in the fire. It bounced, almost comedic, and it was the lest funny thing Eliot had ever observed. Never a religious man, it was all Eliot could do to clench his eyes and pray for a second chance he knew he wouldn't get. He was a coward then, and he was a coward now, and as everything changed around him second by second, everything seemed to stay exactly the same.

He wasn't sure if it was this moment that cement his sudden, burning desire to claw his way back, to put himself back in the narrative, to give up on Penny's pretentious bullshit and fight tooth and nail for the life he died to protect. He saved them so they could live, so that the world would continue to turn. In a sudden moment of ego and blazing confidence, he felt ridiculous entitled to that future too. The mosaic was as close to a perfect life one could get. And he knew he would never get that life again, but if he could even be allowed a slice of it, he could die happy this time, and he would go gently into that good night. But for now, it was all he could do to rage, rage against the dying of the light. Even if Eliot had rejected him, even if he would do so again, even if the peach, once a beautiful symbol of the beauty of all life, now a rotting fruit of a future, a promise so cruelly ripped from his hands, he had never wanted anything more in his life. 

He felt more hot, temperature-less tears rush down his face, and a hand on his shoulders, and then "It's time to say goodbye," and there had never been a worse time to even consider that.

"All right, just, one last look," there wasn't time to make a plan, but he needed to see them, see how good things could be, on the worst night to ever pass, if he was going to do anything. Because the world is unfair and cruel and miserable and just once, Quentin Coldwater wanted something good. 

His ongoing count of enchanted objects reduced from 1 to 0.

Abandoned by life, by everything he knew, by the objects that had once held beauty and power and significance, now nothing but broken ceramic, melting leather, scrambled eggs, scalding metal, burning paper, and inedible fruit, by any faith he once held in the magic of these things, he had nothing left to give. He looked at Penny, and he couldn't move, couldn't argue, couldn't see. All he could do was open his mouth, smile faintly, and ask, just above a whisper, "Please?" 

All Penny could do was look back at him, sigh, and snap his fingers, and then he was alone. Suddenly he was back, looking far more tired than when he left. He laughed and smiled, the warmest look Quentin had ever seen on the man's face. He said, 'You're a fool Coldwater. And a persuasive one at that." Then another snap, a flash of bright light, and he was gone, and Quentin was sitting on a stump, and the fire was burning hot.

The scene was silent as the song came to its somber end, and Quentin was far enough back that he could not be seen. No one moved, no one spoke, and for a moment, it was like a painting, or a fragile glass sculpture on the edge of the shelf, gorgeous and yet terrible, as even the slightest movement would send it careening to the ground. But it couldn't last, and, having not actually expected to find himself here, the only place he actually ever belonged he, in a perfect encapsulation of himself, laughed. A faint, frail, sound, but for all the effect it had, he may as well have yelled.

It was as if a bomb went off.

Julia was the first to react, screaming and letting go of Kady's hand as she clasped her own over her mouth, squeezing the sides of her cheeks so hard it threatened to crack her teeth. Kady, following the sound and the eyes of her friend, made an aborted attempt at Quentin's name that fizzled at out the sight at him. At the same time, Alice slid from the log, her mouth hanging open, her hands outstretched, shaking, but unable to move or grasp. Fogg looked up at the sky, laughing, and thanked whatever, whoever, who let him come back, who let him be happy, and, by extensional, who let Fogg be redeemed. Penny felt much the same sentiment, even if he was far less willing to admit it to anyone, including himself, but he smiled, and allowed himself, through the blinding confusion, to be happy. Margo noticed Quentin before Eliot, who, in a combination of the searing pain in his side, and the visceral feeling of his heart tearing itself apart, did not seem to notice the sudden shift and it's associated chaos. It was instead Margo who was the first to speak.

"Quentin?" And then Julia

"Oh my god, Q" Then Alice,

"Quentin, Jesus." Then Penny,

"Coldwater, the fuck?" Then Kady.

"Quentin? Seriously?" Then the Dean, but more to himself,

"Well I'll be damned." And then it was all over overlapping chaos as Alice managed to stand, reaching Quentin first, pulling him to his feet, and into a crushing hug, as if confirming that he was really there. She dragged him back to Julia, who did the much the same, and then Quentin found himself pulled into a large, almost comical group hug, and then people were crying, and Quentin was crying, the night was suddenly so beautiful and warm. Suddenly, piercing through the sounds of sobbing and the overwhelming volume of the crackling fire, a voice, faint, almost childlike in its hesitant desire to hope, slipped through the air. If it wasn't for the years of attuning to the sounds of the voice, of the emotions that bleed into every word, Quentin would have dismissed as a product of the beautiful chaos of the night.

"Q?" To an ordinary listener overhearing him, the question would have had seemed confused, almost pained. But to Q, it was like the cry of a wounded animal. That itch, that ache, flared almost painfully beneath his skin, and then he was pulling himself from the pile to the man sitting on the log, still braced against his cane, skidding to his knees in front of him. Eliot stared down at him, pinching himself hard enough to bleed. He didn't care. In fact, he didn't think he'd ever cared about anything less. "How-"

"Penny, The first Penny. He, I guess he's got friends down under, or-or something. Anyway's, I'm back, it's, it's really me."

"How long-" he tried again

"Since you guys started singing." He answered again, the kind of casual understanding that comes with being married for 50 years.

Eliot laughed at the absurdity of it all. "I bet we looked pretty stupid, huh?" And then more tearful laughing.

Julia placed her hand on Alice's back to lead her inside and did not meet the resistance, the indigence she expected to find. Instead, Alice merely smiles, soft, painful, but real. "Alice-" Julia started.

"Don't," Alice stopped her. She laughed, smiling wider, almost incredulous. "I've done so many things, Julia, been so many places, seen so many things, known so many people." She laughed, bright and real, "It was never going to be me. I always knew that, and I'm not going to pretend or demand otherwise. I deserve peace, and so does he." If she has not heard herself say the words, Alice would have doubted they could ever come from her mouth. It was as if her understanding of everything had evolved tenfold in the span of about 30 seconds, watching Quentin kneel in front of Eliot, as he wheezed through a tearful laugh. She turned from them, squeezing the tears from her eyes. She was willing to let Quentin go, she just needed to cry it out of herself first. And that was okay. She pulled away from Julia and walked inside, and, with a few remaining glanced back at the shockingly real Quentin Coldwater, so did everyone else.

"I need to tell you something," Eliot began, suddenly desperate, as if Quentin would be ripped away from him before he got the chance to try again. Quentin just stared up at him, expectant, patient, always so patient. "I-When I was, you know, um, the Monster, I needed, I had to get a message to you. And, well, I had to find my worst memory. And it, I found, in the throne room., when I told you-when, when I lied to you." He clenched his eyes shut, like a child bracing himself for bad news.

Quentin stared for a long moment as the memory of a giddy, monster-less Eliot stumbling up to him, babbling, but so clearly him. He could have thrown up if he could remember how to use his throat. "I was going to kill you, El. It. Your body, whatever. I was, we were so close. Jesus, fuck, I thought you were dead."

Eliot laughed, completely inappropriate. "Yeah, well, that makes two of us." The joke didn't land, but Quentin laughed anyways. He composed himself, taking a deep breath. "Q, I promised myself that when I got out of here, I'd be braver. I would try again. Please, let, let me brave. For me. For you. For us." He was practically begging, and he didn't care. All he wanted was Q, safe and secure, back under his chin, like on the long, cold Fillorian winter nights.

Quentin looked back up at him, smiling, a bright, beautiful sight. "Peaches and plums, motherfucker." It wasn't funny. None of this was funny. It the most hilarious, nonsensical thing Eliot had ever heard.

"Peaches and plums, Q," and before Eliot could say anything else, Quentin's hands were on his knees, and he was surging up to kiss him. It was gentle, but there was no doubt or hesitation. If either of them dropped dead here, both would maintain that there could be no situation that it would be better to occur in. But they didn't die. No one died. Just this once, everybody gets to live.

Eliot's hand found home on the nape of Quentin's neck, and it stayed there even as he pulled back, not exactly going far. "I forgive you" Quentin whispered."

At the same time, Eliot went for "I'm sorry," and then they were both laughing again, crying and laughing and holding each other.

Quentin Coldwater's ongoing count of enchanted objects remained firmly at 0. Because that's all they were, objects, matter, space dust in stupid, pointless patterns and shapes. But his ongoing count of enchanted moments ticked back up to one, beginning with this moment, laughing and crying while Eliot held him in place, and no one was dead, and no one was suffering, and it seemed for all the world that everything was going to be okay.

An ongoing count of enchanted moments does not contain just one moment. Rather, it begins with a cold, winter night warmed by fire and love, and climbs and climbs and climbs with every passing second, endlessly, because every moment spent safe in the palm of Eliot's hand was so wonderfully, beautifully enchanted.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and Kudos a happy author makes!


End file.
